β
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
β
β
George Orwell (1984)
β
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
β
β
Oscar Wilde
β
I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
β
Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt
β
If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
β
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
β
β
SΓΈren Kierkegaard
β
No amount of regretting can change the past, and no amount of worrying can change the future.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
β
β
Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (The Teaching of Buddha)
β
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youβve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you canβt wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid itβs like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didnβt exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long dayβs work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, thereβs no need for continuous conversation, but you find youβre quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that thereβs a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure thatβs so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
β
β
Bob Marley
β
Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
β
β
Corrie ten Boom
β
Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.
β
β
Christopher Paolini (Eldest (Inheritance, #2))
β
You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)
β
Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.
β
β
Steve Maraboli
β
You can't stop the future
You can't rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
...is to press play.
β
β
Jay Asher (Thirteen Reasons Why)
β
Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
β
Even in the Future the Story Begins with Once Upon a Time.
β
β
Marissa Meyer (Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1))
β
Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.
β
β
Deepak Chopra
β
Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.
β
β
Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited)
β
Do not let the memories of your past limit the potential of your future. There are no limits to what you can achieve on your journey through life, except in your mind.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.
β
β
Alexandre Dumas
β
It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.
β
β
Nick Hornby
β
The past is always tense, the future perfect.
β
β
Zadie Smith
β
Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
β
β
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
β
The future is now. It's time to grow up and be strong. Tomorrow may well be too late.
β
β
Neil LaBute (Reasons to Be Pretty)
β
The future depends on what you do today.
β
β
Mahatma Gandhi
β
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human faceβfor ever.
β
β
George Orwell (1984)
β
Only you can control your future.
β
β
Dr. Seuss
β
Do not set aside your happiness. Do not wait to be happy in the future. The best time to be happy is always now.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.
β
β
Albert Camus (Notebooks 1935-1942)
β
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance)
β
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
β
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge youβll never walk alone.
...
We leave you a tradition with a future.
The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete.
People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, youβll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Your βgood old daysβ are still ahead of you, may you have many of them.
β
β
Sam Levenson (In One Era & Out the Other)
β
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
β
β
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
β
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
β
Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesnβt catch up, it overtakes β¦ blotting out the future.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)
β
Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables, #2))
β
I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
β
β
Oscar Wilde
β
If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.
β
β
Lao Tzu
β
The bravest people are the ones who donβt mind looking like cowards.
β
β
T.H. White (The Once and Future King)
β
Once you realize you deserve a bright future, letting go of your dark past is the best choice you will ever make.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
β
β
Jane Goodall
β
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
He pulls back to look down at me and when he sees my tears, he brings his hands up to my cheeks. βIn the future... if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again... fall in love with me.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
β
When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
β
β
Thomas Jefferson
β
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
β
β
WisΕawa Szymborska (Poems New And Collected)
β
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
β
β
Mother Teresa
β
It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.
β
β
John Guare (Landscape of the Body)
β
Promise Yourself
To be so strong that nothing
can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel
that there is something in them
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.
To think only the best, to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others
as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past
and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
β
β
Christian D. Larson (Your Forces and How to Use Them)
β
You are the one girl that made me risk eveything for a future worth having.
β
β
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
β
Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures.
No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
β
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
β
β
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
β
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
β
β
Malcolm X
β
There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.
β
β
Janet Frame
β
The future has an ancient heart.
β
β
Carlo Levi
β
The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.
β
β
William Gibson (Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1))
β
She wasn't interested in telling other people's futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
β
Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.
β
β
Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus)
β
Study the past if you would define the future.
β
β
Confucius
β
No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)
β
We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive.
β
β
Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories)
β
I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
β
β
Aldo Leopold
β
You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful.
β
β
Charlaine Harris (Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #3))
β
I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe
β
It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.
β
β
Ally Condie (Matched (Matched, #1))
β
Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'
I was kind of crying by then.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored.
"In future, Clarissa," he said, "it might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious situations."
"You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken.
"Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit."
"I didn't invite him into bed," Clary snapped. "We were just kissing."
"Just kissing?" Jace's tone mocked her with its false hurt. "How swiftly you dismiss our love.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
I donβt live in either my past or my future. Iβm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, youβll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment weβre living now.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.
β
β
George Harrison
β
We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
β
You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.
β
β
Margaret Atwood (Catβs Eye)
β
She looked at them, at the three males who meant everythingβmore than everything. Then she smiled with every last shred of courage, of desperation, of hope for the glimmer of that glorious future. βLetβs go rattle the stars.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
β
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
β
β
Gautama Buddha (Sayings of Buddha)
β
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.
β
β
Seneca
β
Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.
β
β
Andrew Solomon (The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression)
β
I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.
β
β
Beryl Markham (West with the Night)
β
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
β
β
Arthur C. Clarke (Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible)
β
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
β
β
R. Buckminster Fuller
β
Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future--you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Girls you've gotta know when it's time to turn the page.
β
β
Tori Amos (Tori Amos: From the Choirgirl Hotel)
β
It isn't as bad as you sometimes think it is. It all works out. Don't worry. I say that to myself every morning. It all works out in the end. Put your trust in God, and move forward with faith and confidence in the future. The Lord will not forsake us. He will not forsake us. If we will put our trust in Him, if we will pray to Him, if we will live worthy of His blessings, He will hear our prayers.
β
β
Gordon B. Hinckley
β
He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we canβt know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumiβs note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
β
Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.
β
β
Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
β
The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then β to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
β
β
T.H. White (The Once and Future King)
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
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Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
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Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that... there are many kinds of magic, after all.
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Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus)
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TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and placesβand there are so manyβwhere people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we donβt have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
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Howard Zinn
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Ester asked why people are sad.
"Thatβs simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.
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Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)
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Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
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Mary Schmich
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Love is . . . Being happy for the other person when they are happy, Being sad for the person when they are sad, Being together in good times, And being together in bad times.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF STRENGTH.
Love is . . . Being honest with yourself at all times, Being honest with the other person at all times, Telling, listening, respecting the truth, And never pretending.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF REALITY.
Love is . . . An understanding so complete that you feel as if you are a part of the other person, Accepting the other person just the way they are, And not trying to change them to be something else.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF UNITY.
Love is . . . The freedom to pursue your own desires while sharing your experiences with the other person, The growth of one individual alongside of and together with the growth of another individual.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF SUCCESS.
Love is . . . The excitement of planning things together, The excitement of doing things together.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF THE FUTURE.
Love is . . . The fury of the storm, The calm in the rainbow.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF PASSION.
Love is . . . Giving and taking in a daily situation, Being patient with each other's needs and desires.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF SHARING.
Love is . . . Knowing that the other person will always be with you regardless of what happens, Missing the other person when they are away but remaining near in heart at all times.
LOVE IS THE SOURCE OF SECURITY.
LOVE IS . . . THE SOURCE OF LIFE!
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Susan Polis Schutz
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I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover.
Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.
My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.
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Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)